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Wednesday, September 20, 2006

My flute quartet, Remove Before Flight, was performed on August 26th at the West Marin Music Festival. There's a recording of the first movement, "The Breeze", now uploaded to my MySpace. Go have a listen...it's at the bottom of the list of songs.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Lucio Menegon and I are preparing a duo project for the Palais Ideal festival in Chico. It's starting to come together.

I've chosen the text, which is an English translation of the Mansions of the Moon from the Picatrix, an 11-century grimoire. This text is also called Ghayat al Hakim, or "The Aim of the Wise". It was first written down in Arabic, and then translated into Latin in 1256 for Alfonso the Wise of Castille.

The Mansions of the Moon is meant to teach the different stations the moon will go through as it travels through the zodiac. The grimoire tells you what kind of spells you should do when the moon is in each mansion. There are 28 mansions, and an introductory and conclusionary paragraph.

This weekend I recorded myself speaking all the text. Next I'll edit the spoken sections in Digital Performer and try to fit them all into 30 minutes, which is length of the set Lucio and I have at the Palais Ideal. I'm also going to record them again whispered and maybe sung, depending on how the editing goes. When I'm done I'll have something Lucio and I can improvise over on flute, bass flute, and guitar.

The show is on October 21st. Lucio is in Europe right now but he'll be back in the Bay Area by October 6th, since he's in the Illuminated Corridor show at 21 Grand. Sometime between then and the 21st, we'll get together and figure out how to musically accompany all that astrological magic.

About Me

BIOGRAPHY

Polly Moller Springhorn is a composer, performer, and improviser based in Oakland, California, USA. Equally at home in the worlds of free improvisation, composition, and rock, she is a member of Usufruct, Ghost in the House and Reconnaissance Fly.Her compositions and flute choir arrangements are available fromALRY Publications.